1 . Take Back the Congress
In the past 60 years the party in power has lost House seats in midterm elections 13 of 15 times, with an average loss of 24 seats. If our country is still having honest elections in 2026 the nation will turn in our direction. It is too early to gain insight into individual House races except to say that the Democrats are as well poised as any minority party in American history to retake the majority. The Senate is another matter. Currently the partisan split is 53 to 47. The capitulation of the Senate’s Republican majority is their most humiliating hour, as they show that being a Republican means more to them than being an American, sworn to uphold the constitution. So far one Republican (McConnell, KY) and two Democrats (Peters, MI and Smith, MN) have announced their retirements. In addition to those two open Democratic seats, we have 11 seats to defend, with only Ossoff in Georgia being likely to be highly contested.
We need three more U.S. Senators. If Ossoff survives the onslaught here are six races in which we can get the three we need:
Maine: Republican incumbent Susan Collins is an outlier, an anomaly. Democrats have won the last three presidential races in Maine (52.4 to 45.5 in 2024) and but for 2016 won it the previous four times. Both House seats have been held by Democrats since 2018. Democrats have won the last two gubernatorial elections and held the state legislature since 2019. Democrats have a significant voter registration advantage with 36.2% Democrats and 29.5% Republican. As the GOP moves farther to the right Susan Collins and other allegedly “moderate” Republicans will get hung out to dry. There is no such thing anymore as a Republican moderate, only useful stooges who keep the far right in power. We can win this one.
North Carolina. Incumbent Republican Tom Tillis. Statewide elections here have been very close recently. In 2024 Trump won barely, 50.8 to 47.6. It was also a very narrow victory in 2020 with Trump winning 49.9 to 46.17. North Carolina has not had a Republican governor since 2016. Roy Cooper was succeeded by the current governor Josh Stein. Either can beat Tillis.
Fine, you might say, but where is the third Democratic Senate victory?
Maybe Florida, incumbent Ashley Moody. She was elevated to the Senate seat held by Marco Rubio. A Democrat until 1998, she is a hard-core election denier who opposed the abortion rights amendment in 2024 that was supported by 57% of Florida voters. Trump won the state in 2024 (56 to 43) and in 2020 (51 to 48) and by just one point (49 to 48) in 2016. Obama won here in 2008 and 2012. In 2022 Ron Desantis destroyed Charlie Crist, the worst showing by a Democrat in more than 100 years. In the primary Crist beat Nikki Fried, who won a statewide race for Commission of Agriculture in 2018 and is now state Democratic Party chair. The mobilization of 4M unaffiliated voters is key as is Miami-Dade County, which HRC won 29, then Biden by 7 and then Trump by 9. If Nikki runs again can she do it? Maybe. It is not immediately clear who else could.
Possibly Texas: No, hear me out. Yes, Democrats have not won statewide since 1994. Beto O’Rourke did better against Cruz in 2018 (51 to 48) than he did against Abbott in 2022 (55 to 44), and Cruz beat Allred in the 2024 Senate race (53-45). Trump’s victory in the state rested heavily on growing his share of the Latino vote from 34% in 2016 to 41% in 2020 to 55% in 2024. But the game is hardly over. Since 2021 Hispanics are the largest demographic group, when they surpassed Whites. Most of this growth has come in Democratic counties: Travis County (between Dallas and Ft. Worth) voted 71% Democrat in the last election, and Democrats have won the last 5 presidential elections here. Harris County is reliably Democrat and went for HRC by 12.4%. Bexar is San Antonio and Harris won it 56 to 44. Allred killed Cruz here by 16 points. These heavily Democratic areas are the fastest growing in Texas. Texas has been the ultimate battleground for a long time. When Texas falls it will fall very hard and American politics will be transformed.
Plausibly Iowa: A longshot for sure. Republicans have won the past three presidential elections and Democrats haven’t won a Senate race since 2008. The House delegation is solidly Republican. Yet, Harris came within striking distance and was ahead in the final iteration of the most reputable poll by 47-44. Ernest is virulently anti-abortion and even opposes IVF, putting her at odds with reasonable Republicans. Fully 60% of Iowans oppose the state’s draconian six-week abortion ban. Women 65 and older supported Harris 63-28 and independents voted Democratic by 57-29. It is not clear who the Democratic nominee would be or if s/he would be of sufficient stature to raise serious money.
And then there is Kentucky. The future of the republic could be decided here. There is no incumbent. Andy Beshear has been governor since 2020 and before that served as AG. His father was governor from 2007 to 2015. No one not named Beshear has won a statewide election in thirty years. Trump won in 2024 by 65-34 but voter registration is tight, with a Republican margin of 45-43. Beshear won re-election in 2023 easily (53-47) and in 2023 had $7.4M cash on hand. But his spokesman emphatically says he will not be a candidate for the U.S. Senate to replace McConnell. Beshear is just 47 years old. Sign our petition please and tell Beshear you’ll vote for him hext time, for sure but that his party urgently needs him in the U.S. Senate.
I invite you to join the groundswell of public support that will convince Andy Beshear to change his mind, and the course of history. Whatever else he has planned to do when he leaves the governor’s mansion in 2028 is not as important as gaining control over the U.S. Senate, and with it providing the most powerful roadblock to Trump’s power grab. Please sign the petition to urge Beshear to become an American hero of historic proportions. And while you are there sign the petition to commit yourself to attending the massive anti-Trump march in Washington that you know just has to happen in the second half of this year, or sooner. You might also, if you want, go to ActBlue and donate a dollar to Andy Beshear to tell him in the language all politicians understand that his country needs him. Not some guy. Him. That would get us to a 50-50 tie in the Senate, not quite control but enough to effectively block catastrophic things from happening. The Vice President would be stuck in the Senate breaking ties, but at least while he’s occupied he won’t be breaking anything else. If Florida, Texas or Iowa go our way we’d have control. Chuck Schumer’s staff could mockup some Time Magazine covers with him as king. But even if we just get to a 50/50 Senate all manner of obstacles can be thrown in the way of Trump’s Neanderthal agenda before he takes us all the way back to a barren continent covered in ice. The outcome we want is possible but surely not inevitable.
2. Speak the truth no matter what Trump and a compliant media tell you. Trump’s hold on power is far more tenuous than you think, and surely more tenuous than he thinks. Trump depends upon smoke and mirrors more than the Wizard of Oz. He supplies the smoke, and the complicit corporate media supplies the mirrors, making it seem that Trump’s rambling incoherence makes sense. Not only will the elite media not save you, but they will do their best to make the problem worse. They do not just self-censor they pre-capitulate. Had the news media been so cowed and compliant in the Nixon administration our first felonious president would have served out his full term untouched by scandal. Watergate would just be a luxury apartment building on the Potomac. The same small group of grotesquely rich men who make sure you will not hear protest music on your radio are the same guys that make sure you do not hear and see the overwhelming opposition to Trump on your television. However much the political system has failed you the American media has failed you more, by parroting untruths about the size and efficiency of the U.S. government and the tax burden, all to benefit the most important Republican constituency, the super-rich. The news media relentlessly repeats Trump’s delusions that the U.S. government is bloated and filled with unproductive workers, that our governmental expenditures are too high. None of these Trump beliefs are true but the corporate news media will not refute them: Our government is not too big: 54 countries have a higher percentage of government employees relative to the size of the civilian workforce. Our public sector is slightly larger than German, Costa Rica and Zimbabwe and a bit smaller than the Dominican Republic, Albania and Angola. This despite the fact that the US spends the most on military spending, more than the next 12 countries combined. In fact, break out each of the five branches of the U.S. armed forces and the U.S. Navy alone spends more than China, which is ranked second among nations on defense spending. Every one of the branches of the U.S. military has a bigger budget that Russia, the largest next to China. We do not spend too much: We are 52nd in terms of government expenditure by GDP, so a bit lower than Norway, Burundi and Latvia but slightly more than Australia, Bulgaria and Eritria. And the U.S. is by far the world’s largest economy, 41 times as large as those six countries put together, and government expenditures have been stable since 1945. We do not tax too much: 25 nations have a higher marginal tax rate than the U.S. including our economic competitors UK, Canada, Japan and France. During the economic expansion of 105 consecutive months in the 1960s the marginal tax rate, that paid by the highest income taxpayers, was 70%. Now it is down below 40%. Roll back all the tax cuts given to wealthy Americans in the past 20 years and demand compliance with the tax laws that all non-rich citizens have to obey, and the budget is in balance, even in surplus. We do not overtax, we simply do not require all citizens to follow the same rules. Trump’s history of tax evasion is appalling and has become the norm. It is “conservatives” who run up the national debt with their tax cuts: The 12 years of the Obama and Biden presidencies added $17T to the national debt including $1T in economic recover measures. Under Trump in just four years it multiplied 2.5 times, without any legislation to address economic dislocation, by squandering billions on tax cuts. In that single term Trump was by a far more profligate spender than three Democratic presidential terms. It is hard to say whether the Republicans or the news media are more deceitful and misleading. Call it a tie. The Federal government is neither bloated nor overly burdensome. Trump’s relentless attacks, amplified by an uncritical news media, cover for the demolition of government authority over corporate decision-makers in general, and Elon Musk’s ambitions to get even richer in particular. As for the estimated 30,000 people who die every day on our planet from starvation and malnutrition-related diseases they say fuck ‘em, they’re not Americans. Let them eat Teslas.
3. Prosecute individuals for their crimes against Democracy. Say what you will about how our constitution has aged, lo these 250 years since it was new, but this is not a Hungary or a Russian or a North Korea in which an authoritarian ruler can extinguish all opposition. The framers gave us a governmental structure that by its design is extraordinarily difficult to capture — a separation of powers between three co-equal branches and a federalist division between the national and state governments. They gave us a clear repudiation of religious dogma in the conduct of public affairs and the great gift of the rule of law. We owe them our deepest gratitude for a long tradition of robust civil dissent and against the use of the military to enforce the agenda of the political party in power. Enormously prescient, they envisioned the rise of popular despots and greatly hindered the ability of would-be authoritarians to change our form of government. Jaime Raskin, a member of the House and a constitutional scholar has reminded us of the torch we have not yet lit – filing lawsuits (especially at the state level) against the actual individuals responsible for the greatest crimes against Democracy and against us.
4. Hold the largest protest march in US history Trump is doing his very best to spook you with a relentless stream of right-wing fever dreams. Be neither shocked nor awed, and do not mourn for our lost innocence. Yes, our nation will be profoundly harmed by this cabal of conspirators trying to delegitimize public power and replace it with private privilege. Trump and his consiglieres are a biker gang of thugs who will break many irreplaceable national treasures. Their goal is to turn the nation over to the rule of the super-rich, whose allegiance is only to themselves and their own aggrandizement. They will do damage, but cleaning up after them will be a blessed endeavor, a rebirth of the democratic spirit upon which the nation was founded. Protests in state capitals is good but not a substitute for a million marchers and a general strike.
5. Prepare for the most heinous voter suppression ever seen. The Republicans are masterful at voter suppression, inventing new ways all the time to reduce the number of citizens who vote. It falls to the Democrats to counter-mobilize and they have not. Democratic campaign professionals don’t think investing in voter registration is worth it since getting people registered and out to vote is a monumental task, but one Democrats must adopt. Not tables outside the grocery store but a sophisticated, professional billion-dollar effort to transform the electorate. On the most important issues – abortion rights, global climate disaster, racial diversity, compassion rather than contempt – the American people side with us. Let the right keep arguing with Darwin, who died in 1882. The rest of us can move on. The Party of Trump will break any law, jail any dissident to make the electorate whiter and wealthier than the population. Tune out the cacophony of voices saying the Democrats must move to the right. Among all Americans qualified to vote Trump got 30%, Harris 28% and 42% did not vote, far and away the biggest grouping in American politics. If even three of every four eligible voters cast a ballot the Republican party would go the way of the Whigs and exist no more. If most everyone voted the Republican Party would become the republic’s vestigial organ, one that has neither power nor influence to sell.
There are, of course, lots more things to do that can be effective, from lawsuits to sit-ins. These are the ones we should start with, even though there are scores of illegal activities emanating from the White House. But please, do not mistake posting on social media as political action, it is therapy that does not challenge power in any serious way. Remember that America – our America, the home of the brave — has been the world’s most powerful counter to racism and fascism for the past eight generations or so. To channel labor activist Joe Hill: don’t scorn, organize! Hang tough, have hope. We will get through to the other side of this madness.